Case Number 08815

SERGEANT CRIBB: THE HORIZONTAL WITNESS

The Charge

"This man has all the right credentials. He's level-headed, guards his
tongue, and he's nobody's fool." -- Wilmot of the Queen's Household
Police, on Sergeant Cribb

"He does monologues." -- Constable Thackeray, speaking of
Cribb

Opening Statement

Sergeant Cribb was a winner from the start -- literally. Peter Lovesey told
Mystery Readers International he wrote the series' first novel, Wobble to
Death, when he "saw an advert offering a thousand pounds as first prize
in a crime novel competition...A grand! It was more than my salary as a lecturer
in further education." Cribb didn't wobble to death, but took the prize and
solved seven more mysteries.

Cribb is a Victorian-era Scotland Yard investigator; a former military man
who sold his helmet and army badge to a music hall "for half a crown"
before turning to the war on crime. He's aided by the large, amiable Constable
Thackeray, and given marching orders by the upper-crust Inspector Jowett.

The television series, it seems, killed Sergeant Cribb off in print.
"Alan Dobie was such a brilliant actor and so completely sort of fulfilled
the role of Sergeant Cribb, that when I came to think about writing again, I saw
Alan Dobie's face and I couldn't get back to the first concept I had of Sergeant
Cribb," Lovesey told Strand Magazine.

Facts of the Case

In the United States, the Granada TV series Cribb became Sergeant
Cribb, one of the starting season's offerings on PBS's Mystery!.
PBS's Web site notes that Cribb was overshadowed by another series a few
mystery fans might have heard of -- Rumpole of the Bailey. The episodes
were sprinkled over the first three seasons in Gorey Manor. While they didn't
sell as a TV series, they must have moved a lot of books for Lovesey.

The six episodes featured here include two from Cribb's first season
in Britain in 1980, and four from the second season in 1981:

* "The Horizontal Witness" (1980) When Thackeray needs an
operation, Cribb makes sure he gets into Charing Cross Hospital right away. It's
not concern, but an ulterior motive. The Constable will be in a bed near a
murder witness who has been badly beaten. Cribb reasons that when trouble
arrives, Thackeray will be able to take care of it. Cribb isn't counting on a
stern head nurse getting in the way, though. Grade: C

* "Something Old, Something New" (1980) The "something
old" here refers to the 64-year-old groom, and the "something
new" to his 27-year-old bride. Thackeray's going to be the best man, and
Cribb has taken an interest. "You said Henry was alone in the world. He
needs support," Cribb says, inviting himself along. When we hear Mama
reading tea leaves and predicting "a beautiful wedding but a very short
marriage," the audience gets interested as well. Everything seems obvious,
but it builds to an amusing twist at the end. Grade: A-

* "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" (1981) It looks like the
"Odessa steps" sequence from Battleship Potemkin, but it's the
Windsor Castle steps here as the perambulator goes for an unauthorized spin,
thanks to a little extra grease on the wheels. The nanny grabbed the baby just
in time, but the perambulator nearly hit Queen Victoria -- and she's not amused.
She fires the nanny, and has her own ideas on what kind of care her heir needs
-- ideas that differ from those of Beatrice and Henry. The younger royals draft
a reluctant Cribb to solve the dilemma of the dueling nannies, and perhaps stop
an anarchist plot in the process. Watch for an amusing carriage chase, mimicking
the then-popular TV car chases, at the end. Grade: A-

* "The Last Trumpet" (1981) Cribb's got the day off, leaving
Thackeray and Jowett to guard Jumbo, an African elephant at the London Zoo.
Jumbo has just been sold to the Barnum circus, and there's a petition going
around to force the zoo to reconsider. When an elderly eccentric who's been
fighting the deal is poisoned, the case becomes urgent, since the elephant will
soon head for America, accompanied by two of the prime suspects. You didn't
think Cribb would really get the day off, did you? Grade: B+

* "The Choir That Wouldn't Sing" (1981) If a choir is
singing, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and Thackeray's got a sprig of
holly in his hat, it must be Christmas. When a colonel is found dead just before
signing a new will that would leave his estate to a society of bird-egg
collectors, his neighbors say it's suicide. Cribb and a reluctant Thackeray (who
had other plans) head to "Murdersville" (or a plot very much like it,
for Avengers fans) to get the choir to sing. Cribb's methods are
brilliant, although this episode's resolution isn't entirely satisfying.
Grade: B

* "Murder Old Boy?" (1981) Visitor Russell Hagarth mistakes
Cribb for "Penguin." No, he hasn't wandered in from Gotham City. He's
a Petershamian (a school friend of Jowett) who is inviting the Chief Inspector
to a special reunion of pals. They're up to old tricks -- pounding Jowett with
pillows, feathers flying, as he arrives and chasing him through the grounds in
sport. When Thackeray recognizes Hagarth as "a well-known sharp" and
presents Cribb with his findings, the pair suspects that Jowett might have
fallen for a Petershamian sham. Grade: B+

The Evidence

In these Cribb episodes, the cases play second fiddle to creating
vignettes of Victorian life and morality. Three episodes take a long time to get
around to the murder, then find Cribb dispatching the culprit with barely a
breath to resolve the case in 50 minutes. Though not compelling as a whodunit,
it's a neat look at "Jumbo-mania," public school life, the suffrage
movement, and other slices of Victoriana.

Cribb, as played by Alan Dobie (Madame Sin), has a sharp mind and
wit, but is often underestimated. In "Something Old, Something New," a
running gag evolves from the guests at a wedding party repeatedly calling him
"Mr. Cribb," which gradually takes on sarcasm as he and Thackeray
start exchanging salutations with the same honorific. In "The Hand that
Rocks the Cradle," we watch Cribb trying hard not to react as Henry
skeptically asks why such a well-recommended detective has remained a sergeant.
Still, he's the usual sharp sleuth, using the briars found on a victim's clothes
to reason that an "accident" actually was murder. London's Underworld
knows Cribb as a force to reckon with; note the reactions when he turns up at a
villain's funeral.

Cribb's also got a devilish sense of humor. When he heads for Jowett's
school to warn him of a possible plot, he tells Thackeray, "It's our moral
duty to speak to Jowett. Besides, I want to see his old school for myself."
When he finds an exhausted Jowett panting through a game of hares and hounds as
the quarry, it's a joy watching Cribb help his boss turn the tables on the
hunters. When the wit and the wisdom intersect, it's a delight. Take, for
example, the time Jowett catches Cribb and Thackeray in a wine bar on duty,
sampling a fine burgundy. Cribb explains how they combined business with
pleasure, testing a means for tampering with a wine bottle. When Cribb catches
the culprit, you know he wasn't having Jowett on -- or do you?

William Simons (The Woman in Black) plays Constable Thackeray as a
commoner who can annoy a head nurse by showing her underlings how to catch
flying coins, and who often gets thankless tasks, such as impersonating a
carriage driver or digging up evidence in a garden. He does his job -- with a
grumble here and there. Thackeray isn't slow, though. Remember, he's the one who
noticed that Jowett's friend wasn't so friendly.

David Waller (Edward and Mrs. Simpson) as Inspector Jowett is the
comic relief, pompous and infatuated with royalty. Watching him try to join
Cribb's royal perambulator investigation or chafing at the notion that he knows
one of the thugs at the villain's funeral is a delight.

Some episodes here are overly set-bound, but the show's look improves when
the production team gets some reasonably authentic Victorian locations to work
with, such as the old churches in "Something Old, Something New" or
the school grounds in "Murder Old Boy?." In those cases, you'll see a
lot of lingering scenes of people walking grounds. Elsewhere, tricks like a
montage of tight shots of animals and crowds at the London Zoo, set to a period
song about Jumbo the elephant, create a mood and cover for budgetary
restrictions well.

The video quality here is sometimes below par. The picture is faded in
places and can be a little dark; watching faces obscured by shadow got tiresome.
There are also occasional flecks in the picture. Overall, the color has an
oversaturated quality that looks a little like videotape, even though it must be
film. I realize that BFS didn't have a perfect original to work from, but I
would have liked to have seen it spruced up a bit. The sound quality's adequate,
with no lost dialogue, but nothing special.

The extras here are all text. The Peter Lovesey biography and bibliography
and the cast information are decent enough. One episode, "The Last
Trumpet," has a few lines of background information; I would have like to
have seen more of the facts behind the fiction and seen them for all of the
episodes. It also would be nice to hear from Peter Lovesey and wife Jax in
commentary, since they worked together on adapting his novels for TV.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

At $49.98, this set is a bit pricey for a blind buy. The way BFS divvied up
the episodes puts the ones drawn directly from Lovesey's novels on the series'
other volume. Since BFS mixed up the episodes a bit, couldn't they have put the
best ones on the first disc to whet appetites better?

Closing Statement

I'll concede that I'm a fan of Sergeant Cribb from his Mystery!
days, so I'm not an unbiased witness. Although I can see that the production and
transfer leave a lot to be desired, I enjoyed the interplay between the three
leads and the various suspects and witness. The acting's top notch and, as you
know if you've read any of Lovesey's novels, so is the writing here. Those
aspects of Cribb are on par with Rumpole and other Mystery!
favorites.

The Verdict

The original show's not guilty, but BFS could have done better with this set,
toning up the image and providing more background. Maybe a flogging with feather
pillows would help them get that message.